Taika Waititi’s Star Wars Movie Coming Sooner Than Expected?
That will be a change!
If you didn’t know it already, it’s true: Taika Waititi is making a Star Wars movie. The same guy who brought us 2014’s What We Do in the Shadows, 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok and its upcoming sequel Thor: Love and Thunder, and 2019’s Jojo Rabbit is making the next cinematic chapter of the Star Wars saga. And according to Lucasfilm Big Cheese Kathleen Kennedy, we can expect it sooner than we thought: by the end of 2023.
Speaking to Games Radar at this week’s Star Wars Celebration Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy confirmed that the still untitled Taika Waititi film will be the next movie in the Star Wars franchise to release. She also said it has a release window of “late 2023,” though she clarified no specific date was “locked” in yet. Kennedy didn’t offer any new details about the film, though considering her plan to distance the franchise from the Skywalker Saga, it’s a safe bet it won’t cover that.
To date, there is still very little known about the Taika Waititi Star Wars movie, but at least one detail points to it not necessarily being the laugh riot fans might be expecting considering Waititi’s other work. The film was confirmed to be in development in May 2020 by StarWars.com, with the Oscar-nominated Krysty Wilson-Cairns attached to write the screenplay. Wilson-Cairns is not known for writing comedies or even dramedies. Her writing credits include the 2019 war epic 1917, the 2021 psychological horror Last Night in Soho, and the upcoming crime thriller The Good Nurse about a serial killer who murdered around 300 people. In other words, she is not the person you hire to write the Star Wars version of Thor: Ragnarok.
Whatever the movie is about, it won’t be Taika Waititi’s first time working on a Star Wars project. He voiced the droid bounty hunter IG-11 in season 1 of Disney+’s inaugural original Star Wars series, The Mandalorian. He also directed “Chapter 8: Redemption,” the season 1 finale for the show.
Without more details, even speculating about the Taika Waititi movie is tough, considering the multiple directions Star Wars is going in these days. With Obi-Wan Kenobi, The Bad Batch, and the upcoming Andor we’ve got new series set between the prequels and the original trilogy. With The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and the upcoming Ahsoka we’ve got new shows set between the original trilogy and the sequels. With The Acolyte for the first time we’ll go back to the days of the High Republic and with Visions we even had a completely non-canon show. So, we can’t even guess when this upcoming film will be set in the Star Wars timeline, much less the nature of it. It could be the IG-11 origin story, it could be a Boba Fett solo flick, or — since Disney owns both IPs — it could be the crossover no one asked for but everyone will pay to see: Ewoks Vs. Predator.
In the meantime, you can see Taika Waititi’s next film when it hits theaters on July 8. That, of course, will be Thor: Love and Thunder which Waititi not only directs, but stars in as the rocky hero Korg.
